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Monday, September 26, 2016

Kernel Panic

Kernal Panic, digital painting

You'll never guess where I am! It's colorful, wild, hot and artsy (in a Brice Marden meandering-line sort of way.) I'm here because of a frightening computer malfunction.

While writing love letters on my computer, suddenly big, black. scary, primal letters appeared on my screen. I usually take all things technical in my stride; I ignore them. However, this time I couldn't because the primitive type plastered itself slowly but steadily down my computer screen like some evil Barton Fink-esque kind of wallpaper, as if might consume me. Its slow progression gave me, an alarmist in good standing, time to think and I came to a dismal conclusion.

It was the end of the world and it was either God himself, Putin (sore about an illustration I did of him), or one of Trump's 400-pound hackers, sitting on a bed hacking away. Whoever it was, he was communicating a primitive and cryptic message on my computer screen. I believed, the expanding unrecognizable print marching down my screen might be an ancient Biblical tongue, the Russian language, or hacking. Suddenly, at the top of the screen, a header appeared in English. Though blurred and written in a basic and unfamiliar hand, it finally came into focus. It read, "KERNEL PANIC." That's when my computer froze. Everything stopped but those two words which kept multiplying and spreading down the screen–an ersatz army attacking.

KERNEL PANIC,
KERNEL PANIC
KERNEL PANIC
KERNEL PANIC

I didn't know exactly what the words meant, but they struck me as serious. I called for my live-in techie, but he apparently had slipped out to buy a new pocket protector for his pens. In his absence I did what any red blooded artist facing annihilation by computer would do: I grabbed my paints and sketchbook, cracked open the computer, crawled in and started painting the wiggly anarchy I witnessed inside.

Moving along the innermost primordial slime of colored wires and other exotic, twirling electrical arthropods, I painted my way to the bottom of the problem. It was just as the print on my computer screen warned: KERNEL PANIC! Sure enough, there in the depths, all aglow, frightened to death, and tied up with the many different colored wires was Kernel, and, yes, he was panicking. He looked like an ear of corn, but for the fact that he was screaming. His contorted face could have given the screamer in Edvard Munch's painting a run for the money.

I told Kernel he could stop panicking because the doctor (my techie), would arrive any minute. While I was trying to cheer up Kernel, techie returned and called down a life saving prescription.

"to avoid crashing or hang issues, make sure you're exiting Scratch Live before disconnecting or turning off your Rane Scratch Live USB hardware interface (SL1, SL2, SL3, SL4, TTM 57SL and Sixty-Eight). Call me in the morning."Kernel was paralyzed with terror, so I did the "Rane Scratch" thing for him. Much to my surprise, Kernel calmed down almost immediately. The scream melted off his face, the mysterious writing disappeared from the screen and the Kernel started doing his job again–whatever that might be.

I waved goodbye to Kernel, climbed gingerly out of the computer's entrails trying to avoid any residual "hang issues" (they don't sound so good). I admonished my techie that he should never leave the premises again and resumed writing my love letters.